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remindmetoreed · 6 months

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a bookstore bar/cafe? sign me up.

didn't buy any books because i truly do not need to purchase more books but i went for the vibes and had a great time.

i think i'm going to finish The Count of Monte Cristo before the new year!! i'm rooting for me

#remindmetoreed #books #bookstore #bookblr #book blog #reading #reading blog #bookshelf #phoenix arizona

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literarydialect · 5 months

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blog where I show off some old science fiction/fantasy I’ve gotten my hands on and share my personal opinion on them: The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold.

a young man receives a thing called a Time Belt from his uncle Jim and uses it to time travel. he meets various versions of himself and even has a little hanky panky with his past self. existential turmoil, mind-bending paradoxes, and questioning of the “self” ensues.

I want to personally call this my absolute favorite piece of science fiction (thus far!). it hit all the right points for me. this has been reviewed as the Ultimate Time Travel Novel and it does not disappoint. a very quick read that can be knocked out in a day and leave with you a sense of lost sense of identity and apathetic existentialism. this book ruined my day in the best way possible.

it is also very queer!

10/10 ⭐️

#science fiction #scifi #discworld #time travel #bookstagram #bookcore #books and reading #reading blog #reading #fantasy #philsophy #existentialism #dark aesthetic #book aesthetic #dark academia #queer #queer books #queer community

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caramelcuppaccino · 2 years

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days 10-15 of my reading challenge:

i finally finished reading the first book of lotr yesterday!!!! and i lllllllove it!!! i have actually been reading it ever since my last post but because i only can read when i’m on the subway, i didn’t post anything. yesterday i was at the campus as i had three classes (*sobs*) and while waiting for them, i got to read and finally finished the book!!

10. which book will you read after this one?

i’ll read the second book of lotr!

11. do you remember the first book you read?

i don’t remember the name but it was a series for children where a little girl was going on adventures.

12. share the playlist you listen to while reading.

even though i asked the question, i don’t have a certain playlist i listen to so why did i ask this? i can listen to anything while i’m reading because i use music to block people’s talking. ever since i started listening bts, i guess i listen my k-pop playlist. it’s here if you want to take a look at it!

13. what is the best weather to read?

chilly! rainy! cold! autumn! winter!

14. which book quote would you use to describe yourself?

not a quote, but a poem: melankoli by sabahattin ali. i’ll try to translate my favorite part.

“not a friend, nor a lover,

a lunatic away from the world,

melancholy surrounds me,

the inside of my head dies.”

15. okay, share one of your unpopular opinions on a book/trope/author.

are you ready? i hate it when people use liking enemies to lovers as an excuse to read poor, toxic romance. and for me enemies to lovers is overrated too because i don’t get it. personally i don’t think i’d be able to love someone who tried to hurt the people i love or me. so i really don’t get it. and i hate it when there is a guy who is so toxic but everyone loves him oh because it’s enemies to lovers. and i don’t get liking “morally grey” men. i usually hate them. i mean i’m not saying you shouldn’t like them or read that kind of books but i simply don’t understand the hype. so, yeah.

#readingwithlunlun #reading challenge #reading aesthetic #book reading #reading books #reading blog #book quote #bookstores #bookstore #books #book #lotr #new books #bookshelf #bookworm #bookblr #lotr series #lunlunreads

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black-rabbit-razumikhin · 6 months

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Books, So Many Books

The Bedside Pile

~ Matter by Iain Banks

~ The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Physical TBR

~ The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel

~ Plains Of Passage by Jean Auel

~ Shelters Of Stone by Jean Auel

~ Land Of The Painted Caves by Jean Auel

~ The Business by Iain Banks

~ As Long As We Both Shall Live by Joann Chaney

~ Incendiary by Chris Cleave

~ Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

~ Silas Marner by George Elliot

~ Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

~ Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks

~ On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks

~ Here I Am by Jonathan Foer

~ The Appeal by John Grisham

~ A Killer Choice by Tom Hunt

~ Cold Heart by Linda LaPlante

~ The Call Of The Wild by Jack London

~ Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

~ Brothers by Bernice Rubens

~ The Hickory Staff by Robert Scott

~ The Farm by Tom Smith

~ The Master Of Ballantre by Robert L. Stevenson

~ Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift

~ Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

~ The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Storygraph TBR

~ The Lord Of The Flies by William Golding

~ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

~ Animal Farm by George Orwell

~ Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey

~ Sea Of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

~ Blood In My Eye by George Jackson

~ Escape Routes by Naomi Ishiguro

~ The Gospel Of The Eels by Patrik Svensson

~ The End Of Loneliness by Benedict Wells

~ Orlando by Virginia Woolf

~ Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie

~ Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie

~ Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

~ Unexpected Vanilla by Lee Hyemi

~ The Ritual by Adam Nevill

~ Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns

~ Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

~ The Last Tale Of The Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi

~ Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.

~ Battle Royale by Koushin Takami

~ What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher

~ The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

~ American Prometheus by Kai Bird

~ Lie With Me by Philippe Besson

~ The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn

~ Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

~ Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

#dark academia #booklr #reading #books #books & libraries #readblr #reading blog #goodreads #tbr #tbr list

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atruegift · 10 months

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July 14, 2023 °Friday

Road trip necessities: books, headphones, and you must take pictures of anything and everything.

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midnights-wish · 1 month

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In the spirit of me realizing that this was once supposed to be purely a book/ reading blog & that I somehow derailed from this plan immensely, I figured that I should at least pin my personal book recommendations! :)

These are all in the genres that I personally prefer, & are books that I would recommend to anyone despite what their actual genre-preferences are or how often they read, simply because I think that these are so great that they'd transcend that barrier. ♡

› the purple titles are the books that i assume some people could need trigger warnings for! please be aware that these aren't the only ones with heavy subjects in the list though, as i prefer dark books in general! ‹

so, here's mine:

'The Thursday Murder Club', by Richard Osman › mystery, humour; medium-paced; series, 4 books; 2020-2023 ‹

'The Lamplighters', by Emma Stonex › mystery, literary fiction; slow-paced; 2021 ‹

'No Longer Human', by Osamu Dazai › tw; literary fiction, classics; medium-paced; 1948 ‹

'The Family Upstairs', by Lisa Jewell › mystery, thriller; fast-paced; series, 2 books (although personally I'd recommend to only read the first >.<); 2019 & 2022 ‹

'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo', by Taylor Jenkins Reid › literary fiction, romance; medium-paced; 2017 ‹

'A User's Guide to the Brain', by John J. Ratey › nonfiction; slow-paced; 2001 ‹

'The Decagon House Murders', by Yukito Ayatsuji › mystery, thriller; medium-paced; series, 9 books (? as far as I understand; two books are translated into english, the third will be in late 2024); 1987-2012 ‹

'The Time Machine', by H.G. Wells › classics, sci-fi; medium-paced; 1895 ‹

'Kasane', by Daruma Matsuura › manga, thriller, drama, supernatural; slow-paced; 14 volumes; 2013-2018 ‹

'The Summer of the Ubume', by Natsuhiko Kyougoku › manga, mystery, psychological, supernatural; slow-paced; series, 5 books (I've only read the first three, but I'm sure the last two are amazing as well :)); 2013-2017 ‹

'Memento Forest', by Fumiko Fumi › tw; manga, drama, romance; fast-paced; one volume; 2013 ‹

'Helter Skelter: Fashion Unfriendly', by Kyoko Okazaki › tw; manga, horror, psychological; fast-paced; one volume; 1995-1996 ‹

'Ultramarine', by Ching Nakamura › tw; manga, drama, psychological, romance; slow-paced; 3 volumes; 2007-2012 ‹

'A Thousand Brains: A New Theory Of Intelligence', by Jeff Hawkins › nonfiction; medium-paced; 2021 ‹

#book recommendations #book recs #booklr #bookblr #book blog #reading blog #books #reading

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mommy-mystic · 10 months

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"They were quiet and they were foolish, both of them, thinking they were treading with any delicacy, and if they somehow moderated their voices they'd stop the tide of emotion. The things you name do grow in power, but others that are not ever whispered claw at one's heart anyway, rip it to shreds even if a syllable does not escape the lips."

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow (p.231)

#reading #booklr #bookblr #current read #justonemorepage #books and reading #books #book recommendations #bookaholic #bookish #reading recommendations #reading before sleep #reading blog #silvia moreno garcia #gods of jade and shadow #fantsay #fantasy reader #mythology and folklore #mayan mythology

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alyssa-grey · 8 months

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I have a couple of semester long reads this Fall and I don’t know how to feel about it. Right now, it feels good to spread a whole book over the course of the semester because it seems like it offers more flexibility. On the other hand, I’m so used to profs giving 3 to 5 days for us to finish whole books. For now, I’m just going to be glad that I get to move slowly and meander through some my harder reading this year.

.

Do you prefer to read slowly or get through a monograph all at once?

#phdblr #studyblr #study blog #reading blog #book blog #gradblr #literature

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lemonhemlock · 5 months

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chat, i bought into the hype and read This Is How You Lose The Time War, and i gotta say, i'm planning an angery review on storygraph as we speak

#fighting booktok and booktube with my fists #cannot believe i fell for the viral posts #reading blog

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archduchessofnowhere · 4 months

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The Accidental Empress Reading Blog III: Very Belated Final Thoughts

After I brought up Pataki again last night I realized that I never finished to give you my opinion of her Sisi novel, so let’s say goodbye to the year with a final review! I originally had planned to make a detailed commentary of parts two and three as I did with the first part (you can read it here and here), but ultimately I decided to just write my final thoughts without going too much into detail since firstly, I don’t remember every detail of the plot anymore, and secondly, my main problems with this book can actually be boiled down to only two points.

My first major issue was something that I already noted on my previous posts about the novel: the pacing. The book is divided in three parts, each which makes up of about a third of the total length. Part one is set during August of 1853, and covers about four? five? days. I personally don’t think the engagement deserves that many pages, specially when you’re planning to cover Elisabeth’s life up until the Hungarian coronation of 1867: the part dragged on for what seemed like an eternity, and soon I was very bored. We already know Sisi is going to marry Franz, why did we need over a hundred and twenty pages to tell that? Let’s get over it quickly and jump to her being empress please!

… Is what I thought while reading part one, but that ended up being a monkey-paw wish, because from part two onwards the painfully slow pacing turns into INCREDIBLY FAST. The second part covers from September of 1853 until sometime after Rudolf’s birth (the timeline becomes foggy at this point and it’s not really clear anymore in which year we are), each chapter covering about a year. The change is jarringly noticeable: we go from having a detailed day-by-day story to entire months being described in sentences.

And the pacing gets even WORSE in part three, which covers from August of 1862 until the Hungarian coronation. You may be wondering, didn’t the previous part end in 1858? What happened in-between? Well, guess what. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. Part two ends with Sisi’s “flight” from court, which in reality happened at the end of 1860, but in the Patakiverse after Rudolf’s birth. Part three starts with her returning to court after being away FOR FOUR UNINTERRUMPTED YEARS. I won’t go on details on how CRAZY this is: to summ it up, the real Elisabeth was away from court for two years, but she did came back to Vienna in-between her trips, and the last months of her “flight” she spent them within the borders of the empire. And she was always in contact with her husband and updated about her children! What annoys me so much of the four years off-page isn’t the inaccuracy however, but that Sisi comebacks with AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PERSONALITY, because the years away hardened her and made her more aware of how she can use her beauty for her own ends. A change I would’ve love to see happening ON PAGE! But no, the only thing we learn of Sisi’s years away from court is this:

(Lobkowitz wasn’t even Elisabeth’s Oberhofmeister anymore at this point)

And to add insult to injury, this isn’t even the only time it happens! Because after we get two chapters set in 1862… WE HAVE ANOTHER FOUR YEARS TIMESKIP TO 1866 AAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Sorry. I just didn’t like the pacing. Let’s move on to my second major issue: this is yet another Sisi story that revolves almost entirely around men.

I’ve complained about this before, but in general I don’t like how in fiction Elisabeth is often reduced to the relationships she had with the different men in her life. We know for a fact that she also had close relationships with many women: her mother, her sisters, her ladies-in-waiting, her daughter, other fellow royal women. So it’s deeply frustrating to me when these relationships are ignored in favor of, for exemple, a fictional affair with a man she was just friendly with. Which is exactly what this novel does.

In the first half of the book Sisi’s entire character revolves around Franz Josef: she starts out as a lovestruck teenager and as the story progresses she slowly falls out of love with him as she discovers that he won’t stand up to his mother for her and that he is cheating on her. During this part Sisi doesn’t have almost any positive relationship with a woman: her sister Helene completely disappears after part one. Her mother only returns a little before the end of the second part (in a very inaccurate scene that I still liked only because it redeemed Ludovika’s character). Archduchess Sophie is a stereotypical evil mother-in-law, Countess Esterhazy is the controlling “governess”, and her two ladies, Countesses Caroline Lamberg and Paula Bellegarde are depicted as scheming women who conspire against Sisi and try to seduce her husband (… what). Needless to say all these characters are incredibly shallow, because the only person that is given a somewhat more nuanced characterization is Franz Josef.

This trope of “every woman is out there to get our super special female protagonist” is already annoying on its own, but here is also accompanied by a lesser known trope that is equally annoying to me: “the only women who are good are the servant characters that have almost no character traits other than adoring our protagonist and serving her loyally”. Sisi has a (fictional) maid called Agata that accompanies her to Vienna, and is the only person who treats her well during the first half. But we know NOTHING of this maid other than she is Polish and she loves Sisi. She is a fictional character, you can give her a more important role if you want!

Meanwhile, the real life people that had important roles in Elisabeth’s life are also turned into this kind of character. Marie Festetics, who entered in service of the empress in 1872, was one of her closest ladies-in-waiting, and while we know that she did adore her mistress, she could also be very critical of her. In The Accidental Empress, Festetics is a lady-in-waiting since 1854, and her role is completely minimal. We are told (specially on the last part) that she is Sisi’s oldest and most faithful friend at court, but they interact so little on-page (and their moments together are always so bland) that it’s hard to buy. Worse of all, however, was the treatment of Ida Ferenczy: she only appears a couple of chapters before the book ends as a maid that Andrássy recommended. While Pataki keeps in her story that Ida was hired to help Sisi practice Hungarian, on page her only interactions with Sisi consist in fetching her things and receiving orders from her. In real life Ida was a gentry girl that amazingly managed to enter court despite her lack of noble ancestry (there is even a theory that she was actually infiltrated by Deák and Andrássy to influence the empress in favor of Hungary), and Elisabeth liked her so much that she CREATED a position for Ida (the reader of the empress) so she could stay in her staff. This is one of the cases in which the real Elisabeth asserted her agency and power in court, which the book completely takes away from her and by doing so destroys her special relationship with Ida!!!

So you remember how I said that in the first half of the book Sisi’s entire character revolves around Franz? Well that’s because in the second half her entire character revolves around Andrássy. Yep, this is one of those stories. I won’t go into details, but honestly it wasn’t even the made up affair what bothered me: it was the implication that Sisi only got involved with the Compromise because she got personally involved with Andrássy. Elisabeth isn’t allowed to have any sort of political ideas on he own, she must be guided, she must be told what to think by the men in her life. This role must always be fulfilled by a man, and that’s why we can’t have Ida Ferenczy or Marie Festetics discussing politics with Sisi, that’s why they are just background servants that only fetch her things and help her cover up an affair while Andrássy gets to be the dashing hero that saves Sisi for her trapping and passionless marriage.

And I’m just tired of this kind of narrative.

If you read until here, thank you! I’m incapable of writing short reviews. All this being say I do plan eventually read the sequel, solely out of an annoying completionist drive and because I’m curious if Pataki cared for and listened to any of the critics she received from people who like the real Elisabeth. Please let me know of you’d like another in-depth sort of commentary or prefer a general review!

#the accidental empress #author: allison pataki #reading blog #book review

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remindmetoreed · 10 months

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"The way I see it, you mostly stop loving a person the same way you stop respecting them. It can happen all at once if something enormous and terrible falls over the two of you. But for the most part, it happens in inches. In a thousand tiny moments of contempt that unravel the image you had of the person you thought you knew." - The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

#books #remindmetoreed #bookblr #book blog #reading #reading blog #reading journal #storygraph #the echo wife #sarah gailey #psychological thriller #domestic thriller #fiction #contemporary fiction

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literarydialect · 5 months

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blog where I show off some old science fiction/fantasy I’ve gotten my hands on and share my personal opinion on them: The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak.

this book is quite possibly the strangest thing I have ever read (thus far), and i have spent over a year or so compiling old, eclectic books.

it features a futuristic earth that has been transformed into a planet of study and intelligence. time travel is possible, which means the protagonist’s companions include an intellectual Neanderthal, a ghost, Shakespeare (literally the man himself), and a girl with a mechanical sabertooth tiger as a pet. there are also these bug-like aliens called Wheelers that have wheels on either side of them.

would I choose this book as my introduction to the science fiction genre? absolutely not—I only say this because it practically WAS my introduction to the genre. would I recommend it? yes. absolutely. I need others to experience the bizarreness I was once a victim of.

5/10 ⭐️

#scifi #fantasy #books and reading #bookstagram #science fiction #wheel of time #discworld #reading #bookcore #pulp art #author #poetry #reading blog

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justfinishedreading · 10 months

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My Wondering Warrior Existence by Nagata Kabi

Warning: Spoilers Trigger Warning: Mention of Sexual Abuse

When I saw the cover I freaked out: she (maybe ‘they’, the author’s not quite clear on this yet) couldn’t possibly be getting married, last I’d heard Nagata Kabi had written about recovering from alcoholism and had yet to have her first proper romantic relationship.

Turns out at the start of the manga Nagata had gone to a friend’s wedding and felt overwhelming joy at the general happiness of the event, leading her to want to experience the joy of a wedding, but without an actual marriage. Cue a specialist fake-wedding photo shoot, where you can hire a wedding dress and get your picture taken as a bride. Now for all of us more “clued in” we might think how silly, it is not a wedding dress or a party that creates that real feeling of happiness, the genuine feeling of love emitting from a couple and the pride their family feels. And yet how many of us are seduced by the glamour and dream-like nature of a wedding, ignoring relationship issues in favour of an opportunity to wear a wedding dress and have that ONE special day?

Perhaps a fake bride photo shoot isn’t silly at all, perhaps it’s genius, it’s genius for those that can separate their desire to wear a beautiful gown from those that have the main intention of legally cementing a relationship. Power to those that can see through the consumerist crap about romance and understand that what they are really finding attractive is the dress, the flowers, the engagement ring, the special day, and so on. Not the marriage, the everyday mundane relationship stuff.

Unfortunately, the author isn’t quite there in the understanding of all of the above, she starts off by believing that the photo shoot will bring similar happiness to that of a wedding with genuine love between the couple, friends and family, but it does not, then throughout the book she discovers that real love does exist, she thought it was all a collective illusion. A lot of confusion basically.

Now speaking from personal experience I have often wondered whether true romantic love really exists, and whether it can exist long-term, having no real examples of happy long relationships in my family, so like the author, who also comes from a family with unhappy couples, I can understand the questioning of the existence of real love. However while I’ve come to the conclusion that it can exist and long-term too, love simply takes many form throughout a couple’s life, Nagata Kabi on the other hand is still stuck on understanding that first stage of love, that intense attraction love. To her all the words of love songs, and love stories were assumed to be artificial.

There are other things I can identify with, like Nagata Kabi when I first set up an online dating profile in my early 20s, my profile was perhaps “too honest” in presenting my negative qualities, not to the extent that Nagata Kabi has gone to, but over the years I have seen a lot of profiles like that, of people who are insecure and feel the need to highlight everything that they feel is bad right at the start. It’s a sort of self-defence strategy; before you confront me with my failings, I’m going to list them all, and if you initial accept them then that’s resolved. Things aren’t like that, what we think as our worst failings are not necessarily what others are going to think are our worst faults. Nagata is taking a step forward in setting up an online dating profile, but taking two steps back by writing an overly negative profile of herself which she believes will discourage anyone from reaching out to her.

That’s point one. Point two is her surprise that people, lots of people did reply to her profile. Why? Because some people just want to get laid and don’t care if they like the other person or not. Because some people don’t really read the profiles and instead just send generic messages to everyone they come across. Because some people will read an insecure person’s profile and not take the issues seriously, imagining that the person is simply insecure, and with their help this insecure person will cheer right up. And lastly because some people do relate to what’s in the profile and genuinely think meeting up is worth a try.

The first third of the manga is relatable to me on a personal level. The second third is very sad to read, the author discusses being molested by a stranger as a child, and the attitudes of those around her that made her feel responsible for being a victim, in particular teachers using the assault year after year as a warning to other children, bringing it up in classrooms and assemblies. This is only described in about 5 pages but says a lot about it in a very straightforward way.

After that section there’s a lot of over-thinking about the nature of romantic relationships and the hurdles stopping the author from pursuing a relationship: lack of faith in people, trying to figure out what’s her type when she’s never really gone out with anyone, trying to figure out her gender, her sexual orientation and so on. While it’s good to think about these things, and this book will help a lot of like-minded people, thinking will only take you so far with certain things. For example 4 books after My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness (published 2016, My Wandering Warrior Existence published 2020), the author is still not sure what her sexual orientation is, now of course everyone is figuring themselves out at different speeds, the author does not owe us an answer about her sexuality, but perhaps instead of more thinking it might be helpful for Nagata to meet different types of people, to interact with them, spend time with them, and through social experience help figure out what her type or types are.

I think a good, honest thing that the author has done is to dedicate a chapter to a letter a reader wrote to her, it explains attraction and love, and since these are concepts that the author herself is working to understand she’s decided to simply share what this reader wrote to her. A lot of what is explained of love and romantic relationships can seem like common sense to the majority of us, but I’m sure there are a lot of people, perhaps who are autistic, neurodivergent or lack experience, or are asexual or many other things that I don’t yet know about, that will really appreciate this book, the explanations, and identify with the author’s struggles.

The manga does end with a few points that even the most ‘with it’ person often fails to realize, such as you need to love yourself first before you’re able to love others, if you bully yourself you learn that behaviour and you may end up bullying other people, be it a partner or even children and friends.

And then there’s the importance of children in a family, children bring joy to a family, as family members get older and grumpier, more disillusioned or tired with life, seeing children react with joy and wonder at all that is new to them can invigorate the mood of the family. As the author considers this and her guilt for not providing her parents with grandchildren I am grateful for her mother’s interjection: grandchildren don’t automatically fix everything. She gives an example of an acquaintance who doesn’t have a satisfying relationship with her grandson… and Nagata’s mother comments that a dog would be cuter than a grandchild. While that may seem shocking to some people, the thing to take away from that is that not every human is meant to be a parent, nor every parent makes a good grandparent.

The manga ends on a happy note, although to many it may seem like nothing much happened, and the revelations the author reached aren’t particularly special, and to me it did feel at the time like perhaps the book was written to stretch out the success of the previous books, but without much to say. It fares better on a second reading, for some of the reasons I’ve already discussed, it’s a good book and a comfort to those who find it difficult to understand love, relationships and attraction on a basic level, and it is a reminder to all of us that life is not lived out in the simple plot of a story, when an author writes something autobiographic we should not expect all issues to be neatly tied up, we should not expect for questions about the nature of love to automatically result in a marriage by the end of the book… or by the end of book 5.

Review by Book Hamster

#just finished reading #my wandering warrior existence #nagata kabi #my lesbian experience with loneliness #lgbtq manga #pride month #pride month books #manga #manga recommendation #reading blog

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highfantasybobbyhillreads · 4 months

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Come plan a reading journal with me.

This year I got really into bullet journaling. I like that they’re free and creative. There’s no real rules, but there’s still structure to the pages. It’s really just a good way for me to plan with my neurodivergent brain.

For 2024 I want to use a dot grid book to do a reading journal. Reading is really important to me, and after taking some genre specific classes this past semester, I want to branch out and read things that I wouldn’t normally read. I also think it will help me a lot as my family and I go into a “no buy” year. I have a lot of books I’ve purchased but haven’t read, so there’s plenty for me to pull from. I also plan on using Libby, my college library, and the local library. Not to mention, there’s plenty in my kindle and audible libraries I haven’t read yet.

I’ve done some research on TikTok, and found a creator whose reading journal style I vibe with. Admittedly a lot of my category ideas came from her channel (@lindseybluher), but I think that these can be so broad that it allows creativity to flow. If this is something you’re into, I highly recommend checking her out.

I ordered some supplies today, a new grid journal and some pens. I’m a perfectionist at heart, so pre-planning a journal helps me to avoid mistakes I might dwell on later. Here’s what I scribbled in Goodnotes while I wait for my supplies in the mail.

Here I was really just jotting down all the section ideas I had seen that I liked. The ones that are crossed out are ones I’ve decided not to do, and the highlighted ones are the ones I’ve chosen to organize the journal.

Starting with “# of books for the year”, I really just decided I don’t want to put an overall quantity goal on books to read. The main goal of this project is to read more intentionally. A number seems like more pressure than I’m comfortable with. “List of books I already own” (or “book backlog”) ultimately got cut for similar reasons. Like I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of unread books laying around. A list of them might be too overwhelming. The “abc” challenge just didn’t vibe with me anymore when I was reviewing these sections.

This page breaks down the broader sections of “Series to read” and “Book Bingo”.

Series to Read: Order of Crowns by Kate Elliott, The Witches sub-series of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Parable of the Sower (reread) and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, and the Sword Dancer series (reread) by Jennifer Roberson.

Some of the categories for Book Bingo are a bit plain maybe, but I tried to think about the books I already own when deciding what to put in this section. This is one of the many coloring activities I have planned.

Genre Bubbles will be another page of coloring that is basically just a bunch of circles of various sizes that have genres scribbled in them. Each time I read one of the genres I’ll color in a bubble.

The other two sections on this page are lists of books in my kindle and audible libraries that I haven’t read yet. I chose 12 from each, one each for every month. This will be important for the Bracket pages I’m planning.

For this last bit I was just tracking down the books in the Discworld sub-series I’m planning to read. This is the only series I chose that I don’t own. The books that are available on Libby (all but 1) I also went ahead and tagged in the app so they are easy to find later.

And that’s it for now. I plan on using this as a place to track my reading progress.

Next post when the new journal arrives!

*C*